Demosthenes Agrafiotis is an experimentalist who deftly combines poetry, painting, photography, multimedia, and performance with the written poem. He has authored more than 13 books of poetry and essays and exhibited his photography, paintings, drawings, and installations internationally.

Omnia Amin was born in Cairo, Egypt. She earned her doctorate in Modern English Literature and Feminist Theory at the University of London and is an Associate Professor at the College of Arts & Sciences at Zayed University in Dubai. She is co-translator (with Rick London) of works in Arabic by Mahmoud Darwish, Nawal El Saadawi and Ibrahim Nasrallah.

Sean Arnold believes that vampires are after his marrow. He is not alone in that belief. He is on the run. He is in the Midwest. He will not say where. He does not want to tip them off.

Wayne Atherton attended Massachusetts College of Art 1969 to 1972 and has actively been involved with making visual art ever since. He moved to Maine in 1976 and joined the staff of The Café Review, Maine’s oldest poetry & art journal since 1989, in 1991 and has served in various editorial capacities ever since; currently he is senior art editor. In the early 1990s he began making mixed media works on paper and has practiced that medium ever since, all of it done by hand with no digital or computer enhancement. He has collaborated with poet Paul Pines on two published books of poems and images, Taxidancing (IKON Press 2007) and most recently, Last Call At The Tin Palace (Marsh Hawk Press 2009).

Noel Bebee I'm a sixty five year old (mostly self taught) artist living in Canada. After a 23 year self- imposed break from art I began to work with digital media and have been creating digital art for about 14 years. When I was doing old school work (painting on linen with oils) they were large pieces around 6ft. by 4 ft. or 4 ft. by 3 ft. in size. I've been trying for the past 14 years to get back to those sizes with the digital work and Giclée printing. The very first painting that I did was around 12 inches by 17 inches and printed on a Hiedelberg 4 colour press. At the time, the digital file was considered to be fairly large, but at the time a 250 megabyte hard drive was also large. It's taken me 14 years to get from a Mac LC lll to a Mac G5 and the image files have gone from 3 or 4 megabytes to 2 gigs. The latest painting tentatively titled (All Hell Broke Loose When Eve's Water Broke) is the first and only painting that I've done with a Wacom Tablet and pen and not a mouse. It will be almost a Gig in size when it goes to print. Its' actual printed size will be 4 ft. by 6 ft. 8 inches.

Sandy Berrigan lives in Albion, CA, and has been writing haikai no renga (linked verse) with Pat Nolan for more than 15 years. Her passions are making quilts, gardening (garlic, apples, fava beans), and traveling. She is co-editor, with Ron Padgett, of Dear Sandy, Hello: Letters from Ted to Sandy Berrigan (Coffee House Press, 2010).

J. J. Blickstein is a poet and former editor of the defunct Hunger Magazine. He lives in Woodstock, New York with a lovely biologist/R.N. and their sons. He is a dedicated student of Chinese Internal Martial arts. Published books include Barefoot on a drawing of the Sun, (Fish Drum Inc., 2006), and a handmade artists’ book + CD collaboration with French painter, Jean-Claude Loubieres, titled Signs/Signe (Paris, France, 2007). Works have recently appeared in Skidrow Penthouse, Free Verse, Arson, House Organ,Jivin’ Ladybug and in the anthology POEM: Poets on an Exchange Mission (Fish Drum, Inc. 2009). A new full-length manuscript needs a home. Blickstein is taller than Robert Kelly and far less prolific. He likes eating with chop sticks and prefers gin.

Karen Bowles is the founder, publisher and editor of Luciole Press. She gained the nickname “Firefly” from a friend for her enduring love of the glowbugs in the South; “Luciole” means firefly in French. She graduated from San Francisco State University with a B.A. in Literature, and loves photography, reading, writing, theatre, and painting. After spending many years moving around, this military brat has laid down roots in Northern California, where you can find her gazing at stars and arguing with the bossy blue jay in her backyard.

Jason Braun a.k.a. Jason and the Beast, has been writing performing writing poetry for over ten years. He recently edited an online anthology for Big Bridge called The Fusion. In that time he has been a featured guest of Marc Kelly Smith(the creator of Slam Poetry) at The Green Mill in Chicago, published poems along side Maya Angelou in Drumvoices Revue, and shared billing on shows with B.B. King, Robert Randolph, Sole and the Skyryder Band, and many more.

Mark Bromberg's poetry has appeared online in Levi Asher's Literary Kicks. (NYC). A selection of his poems is in the tenth anniversary issue of Jack magazine (San Francisco) and his non-fiction piece Brother, can you paradigm? is featured in Drunken Boat #11, Spring 2010. He maintains a reading blog, Bellemeade Books, with an emphasis on contemporary fiction, art, and poetry. He lives near Athens, GA.

In March of 1999, at the age of 14, Christopher K.P. Brown wrote his first poem, Teenager, Not Danger, in order to enter Southern Arkansas University’s youth writing competition. Though Teenager, Not Danger was his first attempt at writing poetry he won first place. In August of the next year he self-published his own collection of poems, Content, and sold over 200 copies for $20 a each. He was only 16 years old at the time.
After graduating from Pine Bluff High School in 2002, Christopher moved to Macon, Georgia to attend Mercer University where he graduated from in 2007 with a degree in African American Studies. However, during his time at Mercer he recorded three poetry albums: Primary Concern, Deuteronomy 19, and 2 Pens & Lint: Volume 1. Half of the funds made from 2 Pens & Lint: Volume 1 went towards The Power of One scholarship competition which K.P. and his long time collaborator, Okenna Oparah, sponsored for students at Central High School in Macon right down the street from Mercer University. Christopher released his latest CD, POETRY: a hip hop album in September of 2007. Once again reaching the goal of 200 copies sold, Christopher plans to push and promote this album until at least 1,000 copies are sold. In the summer of 2008, Christopher embarked upon a ten show tour known as the Straight No Chaser tour. He created a buzz for the tour by producing his own mixtape, the Straight No Chaser mixtape. After sending out 500 free copies of the mixtape to those who supported his career over the years, he headed to Atlanta, Macon, Little Rock, Baltimore, and Washington DC to do shows. Now that he has graduated and is focused on doing poetry full time, Christopher is working everyday to establish his company, 2 Pens & Lint as a well known and respected company that concentrates on building poetry as an industry in which poets are able to become financially stable. When 2 Pens & Lint was created as a website in 2003 Christopher was only 18 years old. Since then he’s studied the poetry industry; he’s had successes and failures in poetry; but most importantly he feels that he’s still young enough to live up to the 2 Pens & Lint motto of moving towards “A New Direction In Poetry”.

Wendy Brown-Baez is renowned for her signature style as a performance poet; she takes you into her vibrant, colorful world with sensual imagery, elegant rhythms and poignant stories as she voices the relentless pursuit of the human spirit for connection and joy. She has traveled to perform her poetry nationally and in Mexico, in cafes, bars, bookstores, galleries, schools, community centers, art festivals, and private homes. Ceremonies of the Spirit, a collection of love poems sensual and celestial, debuted at the Green Mill Jazz Club in Chicago.She has published poetry and creative non-fiction in dozens of literary journals as well. She was the recipient of 2008 and 2009 McKnight grants to teach writing workshops with at risk youth.

Sean Burke has poems published or forthcoming in Spooky Boyfriend, Now Culture, Pear Noir!, Jellyfish, and Strange Machine, among others. He lives in Dover, NH.

Terri Carrión was conceived in Venezuela and
born in New York to a Galician mother and Cuban father. She grew up in Los Angeles where she
spent her youth skateboarding and slam-dancing. Terri Carrion earned her MFA at Florida
International University in Miami, where she taught Freshman English and Creative Writing,
edited and designed the graduate literary magazine Gulfstream, taught poetry to High School
docents at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami and started a reading series at the
local Luna Star Café. In her final semester at FIU, she was Program Director for the Study
Abroad Program, Creative Writing in Dublin, Ireland.

Her poetry, fiction, non-fiction and photography has been published in many print
magazines as well as online, including The Cream City Review, Hanging Loose, Pearl, Penumbra,
Exquisite Corpse, Mangrove, Kick Ass Review, Exquisite Corpse, Jack, Mipoesia, Dead Drunk
Dublin, and Physik Garden among others. Her collaborative poem with Michael Rothenberg,
"Cartographic Anomaly" was published in the anthology, Saints of Hysteria, A Half-Century of
Collaborative American Poetry and her chapbook "Lazy Tongue" was published by D Press in the
summer of 2007. Her most recent projects includes collaborating on a trilingual Galician
Anthology, (from Galician to Spanish to English) and co-editing an online selection of the
bi-lingual anthology of Venezuelan women writers, Profiles of Night, both to appear in
late August, on BigBridge.org., for which she is assistant editor and art designer. Currently,
she is learning how to play the accordion.
Terri Carrion lives under the redwoods and above the Russian River in Guerneville, Ca. with
her partner in crime Michael Rothenberg, and her dogs Chiqui and Ziggy.

Michael Castro co-founded the magazine River Styx. From 1980-2000 he was director of the River Styx at Duffs Poetry Series. He is the author of Interpreting the Indian: Twentieth Century Poets & the Native American and seven collections of poetry, including most recently, The Man Who Looked Into Coltrane’s Horn, Human Rites, and The Bush Years. He has co-translated with Gabor G, Gyukics three books of modern Hungarian poets, including the A Transparent Lion: Selected Poetry of Attila Jozsef . He has been active as a performance poet, collaborating with musicians for decades. Recently Freedonia Music issued three CDs of his work: Kokopilau, with wind master J.D. Parran; Deep Mirror, with multi-instrumentalist Joe Catalano, and Needle of Light with the James Marshall Human Arts Ensemble.Castro hosted the Poetry Beat radio program in St. Louis (1989-2003). He has been presented with two awards for lifetime achievement: a special Guardian Angel of St. Louis Poetry Award from River Styx in 2000, and the Warrior Poet Award, the ceremonial sword for “cutting through ignorance,” in 2005 by Word In Motion. He teaches at Lindenwood University.

Neeli Cherkovski (Santa Monica, CA, 1945) is an applauded poet, critic, memoirist and literary biographer. He has written twelve books of poetry, including: From the Canyon Outward, the award winning Leaning Against Time, Elegy for Bob Kaufman and Animal; two acclaimed biographies, Bukowski: A Life and Ferlinghetti: A Biography; his book, Whitman's Wild Children (a collection of critical memoirs), has become an underground classic. In the late 1960s Cherkovski co-edited the poetry anthology Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns with Charles Bukowski. Since 1975, Neeli has lived and worked in San Francisco . For five years he was Writer-in-Residence at New College of California, where he taught literature and philosophy. In 2005 Cherkovski won the Pen Oakland-Josephine Miles Literary Award. He is also a Friends of the SF Public Library Literary Laureate. Currently Neeli is completing an as yet untitled memoir of his life in poetry, a collection of poems on his travels in the Philippines, and a selected poems.

David Chirico teaches writing at Broome Community College and paces the floors of a house at the top of a hill in Binghamton, this much is certain. That the house resembles something like Gormenghast is possible. Add to this the difficulty of discerning whether he is working on a poem or a novel or an essay at any given period of time. And the extent of his daily difficulties, the habits he has tried to banish, plus the vices he has definitely coddled.

Chella Courington’s chapbook of prose poetry, Girls & Women, will be released by Burning River in spring 2011. On the periphery of performance poetry, my recent poetry appears in Gargoyle, Opium Magazine, Moria, Pirene's Fountain, and DMQ Review.

Nancy Victoria Davis is a painter, illustrator, book designer, installation artist and co-founder of Big Bridge Press. Born in New York and raised in Ada, Alabama, she took the big bridge to California in 1975, and since then has surrounded herself with art and nature. In addition to operating a tropical plant nursery, she has been inspired by poetry and illustrated the works of Jim Harrison, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Whalen, Michael McClure, Andrei Codrescu, and Joanne Kyger. She has been awarded The Rounce and Coffin Award for her design and illustration of "What The Fish Saw", and her broadside "Elegy For The Dusky Seaside Sparrow" was chosen "Best Broadside of The Year" selection by Fine Print Magazine. Her work has been exhibited at The New York Public Library, The San Francisco Public Library, and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Rental Gallery. Her illustrations have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Nerve Bundle Review, Mike & Dale's Younger Poets and Cafe Review.

Geri Digiorno says "I've been doing art of some kind all of my life. In the 60's I attended College of San Mateo and had a wood sculpture accepted in a show at University of Santa Clara. In the 70's I studied with Brice Bowman at Solano College working in oil and acrylic. When I moved to Petaluma I started doing watercolor and collage; I was fortunate to study with Marsha Connell and Linda Edwards. Later I discovered Nell Melcher, a wonderful wartercolor artist and teacher. I have exhibited my collages and taught collage and poetry at the Hamilton Club House in Paterson (New Jersey), The Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Santa Rosa Junior College (Petaluma) and Cots Homeless Center in Petaluma. In 1996, I created the Petaluma Poetry Walk, which is celebrating its 16th year this September, and in 2007, co-edited Petaluma Poetry Walk, 10 Year Anthology. My first poetry book, White Lipstick, came out in 2005 from Red Hen Press. I have also published 3 poetry chapbooks."

Joseph Donahue lives in Durham, North Carolina. His most recent volumes of
poetry are Incidental Eclipse (2003) and the first volume of an ongoing poetic
sequence, Terra Lucida (2008). Both are published by Talisman House. The second
volume of Terra Lucida, Dissolves, is forthcoming in 2011, also from Talisman
House.

Sharon Doubiago, a native of California, has written two dozen books, most notably, the epic poems Hard Country, and South America Mi Hija. Two collections of poetry, Psyche Drives the Coast and Body and Soul, have won numerous awards, including the Oregon Book Award for Poetry and two Pushcart Prizes. She is also the author of the story collections, El Nino (Lost Roads) and The Book of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (Graywolf), a story from which won a third Pushcart, and which in 2005 was selected to the list, Literary Oregon, 100 Books, 1800-2000. She has just completed her childhood memoir, My Father's Love/Portrait of the Poet as a Girl, an excerpt of which is in The Santa Monica Review (Spring 2005) and Love on the Streets, New and Selected Poems. Her latest published book is Sharon Doubiago Greatest Hits 1976-2003, from Pudding House Publications (www.puddinghouse.com). A 2002 California Arts Council Fellowship Award enabled these works. In spring 2006 she will teach in the Poetics program at New College. She lives in San Francisco and Mendocino.

Laurie Duggan was born in Melbourne, Australia, lives in Faversham, England, and produces a poetry art and whatever blog, Graveney Marsh. His most recent books are a new edition of The Epigrams of Martial (Boston, Pressed Wafer, 2010), Crab & Winkle (Exeter, Shearsman, 2009) and The Passenger (University of Queensland Press, 2006). Forthcoming: Leaving Here a limited edition book with art-work by Angela Gardner (Brisbane, Light-Trap) and, hopefully The Complete Blue Hills (Sydney, Puncher & Wattman).

Clayton Eshleman, born in Indiana in 1935, is one of the most prolific and prominent of American poets, translators, and essayists. Retired Professor Emeritus of English at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, he is former editor of the journals Caterpillar and Sulfur. His translations include The Complete Poetry of César Vallejo (University of California Press, 2007) and several collections of the poetry of Aimé Césaire co-translated with Annette Smith and A. James Arnold, including Aimé Césaire: The Collected Poetry (University of California Press, 1983) and Solar Throat Slashed (Wesleyan University Press, 2011). Recent publications include:
An Alchemist with One Eye on Fire (2006) Archaic Design (2007) The Grindstone of Rapport / A Clayton Eshleman Reader (2009) and Anticline (2010).